


If You Talk Enough Sense (Then You'll Lose Your Mind)

by Ambrosia



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), Green Arrow (Comics), Green Arrow - All Media Types
Genre: 3x23 speculation, F/M, dealing with canon consequences, kinda angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-07
Updated: 2015-05-07
Packaged: 2018-03-29 11:51:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3895315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ambrosia/pseuds/Ambrosia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He touches a hand to the corner of his mouth, where if Felicity tried really, really hard, she could probably spot a tint of red. “I know you’re angry,” Oliver starts. </p><p>There are four different reactions of disbelief in the lair and range everywhere from Laurel’s raised eyebrow to Felicity’s squeak of ‘understatement!’ to Digg physically taking another step towards Oliver with a look on his face like he would like nothing more than to give Oliver a reason to go get some false teeth. </p><p>Oh, double frack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Talk Enough Sense (Then You'll Lose Your Mind)

**Author's Note:**

> 3x23 (and after) Speculation.
> 
> Of course I believe our Hooded Hero will eventually save the day, I'm looking forward to seeing the consequences of giving up everything that ever meant anything to Oliver Queen. I think Team Arrow is going to need some time apart after the events of 3x23, and I think Oliver is going to spend the next couple months doing his best to earn back his team. 
> 
> (Maybe even in the order that he acquired them in the first place. 'Acquired', he didn't acquire anybody, everybody else 'acquired' an Oliver Queen. Congratulations! You've discovered one broken and angsty Vigilante! Would you like to equip him now?)

They stand like soldiers in a row, equal distance apart, equal space, equal stillness, equal stiffness in their shoulders. 

Which is ironic, really, because Felicity’s always had bad posture, ala sitting at a computer chair fourteen hours a day and even the best ergonomic mouse and keyboard do nothing to fix this. 

Digg’s still, like, _still_ , still, like sometimes when he slipped back into his soldier posture when he was trying to keep a straight face, but it’s different. Digg’s angry. And not like, angry, angry, like _Roy-did-you-really-do-what-I-think-you-just-did_ angry, but like angry. 

Like he immediately swings and hits Oliver right in the jaw, angry. 

The Felicity of twenty-four hours ago would have flinched. Probably yelped. Probably tried to stop inner-team violence in one fashion or the other. 

The Felicity of two seconds ago does neither. Not one person on Team Arrow moves to do a damn thing.

He touches a hand to the corner of his mouth, where if Felicity tried really, really hard, she could probably spot a tint of red. “I know you’re angry,” Oliver starts. 

There are four different reactions of disbelief in the lair and range everywhere from Laurel’s raised eyebrow to Felicity’s squeak of ‘understatement!’ to Digg physically taking another step towards Oliver with a look on his face like he would like nothing more than to give Oliver a reason to go get some false teeth. 

Oh, double frack.

“Digg,” Oliver says. “I’m sorry. I had to find a way to convince Ra’s, and there wasn’t anybody else that wasn’t a civilian—”

“So you take,” John says slowly. “My,” he stops for emphasis. “ _Wife_.”

“Incredibly stupid move, Ollie,” Thea comments. “Even for you.” 

“I’m out,” Digg says, stiffly. “Laurel, Felicity, Thea, you three know how to get ahold of me.” 

It’s final. Razer-wire sharp. Felicity would flinch but John held her in his arms as they were ‘dying’. Read: noxious almost-death gas that slowed their heartbeats until it they were dead enough to fool the League guards. 

Felicity was never going to be able to watch Princess Bride again. Ever. And that _sucked_ because Cary Elwes in black silk had been her college dorm’s four-AM-redbull-and-self-loathing-fueled-paper-writing-extravaganza fallback. 

“Bye, Digg,” Felicity says, halfheartedly. For her, John has a kiss for her forehead. He has an old-buddy handshake for Laurel and a hug for Thea.  

But then he’s gone. Oliver watches him go with his mouth just slightly open, like he wants nothing more than to say something. But he doesn’t and John goes up the stairs to the foundry entrance. 

A moment later, he’s gone.

She can’t really look at Oliver. Sure, looking at Oliver has always been a strange mixture of ‘god you are attractive, stop it’ to ‘wow you are such a complete geek I’m so mad I can’t share this with anyone outside this room’, but now, it’s. Felicity’s throat feels like it’s down in her toes and her heart is possibly in her left bicep and her tongue is very possibly in her kneecap. 

Somewhere, _somehow_ , she had let just the smallest piece believe that Oliver wasn’t Al Sah-him, that Oliver Queen was in there, hiding, somewhere, and if she just called out hard enough he would peek through. 

She’d held on to that little bit of belief until the air in that tiny little excuse for a jail cell in Nanda Parbat had started getting hard to breathe. Until her vision had started going blurry, regardless of her glasses. It died somewhere between that one last bit of consciousness in which she swore that she’d haunt the shit out of the League of Assassins for the rest of eternity and really, truly convincing her brain that she was actually about to die. 

Felicity stands there for about three seconds before she realizes that her feet want to follow John. She’s not sure how it happened, whatever it is, whatever _this_ is, but it’s here, and it hurts, and it seems to fill up all the stuff she had in her head from before. 

“I’m gonna,” she squeaks. Clears her throat.

“Felicity,” Oliver says, softly. 

“Nah, I gotta,” she says again, this time louder. “Look, I’m, I’m not sure what the point of this was. I mean, obviously, I get it. Save the world. Save Starling City. Stop the League of Literally Where Do You Get All These Henchmen. Yay, Starling City Saved! Had to be done. I get it, I do.” 

Oliver’s wearing that look on his face like when Thea was dying. 

Felicity does her best to ignore it. 

Her feet are already backing out, the way that Digg went. The further away she goes the worse the expression on Oliver’s face gets. One part of her _hates_ the fact that this feels like running away, but for her, from her perspective: twenty-six hours ago the idiot her stupid-ass had decided to fall in love with walked away from a room in which they were choking to death on some Captain-America-level-bullshit. 

“You know, cause, there are some thoughts you think when you are about to die,” she starts babbling. “And they were really not the thoughts I expected I was going to be thinking about as I was dying? And I,” she draws a quick breath. “I uh, I need some space. You know how it is, I just got handed a fortune 500 company, threw a tablet at a guy, got manhandled by assassins, you know how it is. I got gassed with a poisonous substance.” 

Central City sounds freakin’ great, at this point. But, oh, right. She’s the CEO of a fortune 500 company. She actually has to show up for work tomorrow. 

“Felicity,” Oliver says. “Please.”

Felicity doesn’t have stuff here like John did. Well, she did, but it was like, a spare set of clothes for emergencies that she hadn’t bothered to dig out of the rubble. A stupid fern that was still laying around somewhere. Which was really shitty, because the Cave used to feel more like home than her actual home. Now it makes her nauseous just to be here. 

So she doesn’t have anything to grab. 

But Laurel gets a hug, Thea gets a hug. 

Oliver gets a long, pointed stare. There’s a hell of a lot that goes unsaid, but Felicity doesn’t really need a rehash. She’s always up for the good old bait and switch, okay. She was with Malcolm, and Slade, but this? 

She’d once known Oliver Queen, possibly better than anybody else in the Multiverse. But even now, with that buzzed hair and dark circles beneath his eyes, Felicity can’t tell if he’s the Arrow of if he’s the man that walked away as Team Arrow were begging for their lives.

“Goodbye, Oliver,” Felicity says. It’s a stupid thing to say. It doesn’t capture anything that she actually _wants_ to say. It’s not ‘for whatever stupid reason I still really kinda love you but can’t be sure that I can figure out who you are right now’.

But it’s the best she’s got. She gives up on goodbyes with a wince and follows John.

“Felicity,” Oliver says, quickly, like he knows he’s about to lose his chance. “I would have never, ever, let them hurt you.”

“You watched us die, Ollie,” Laurel says. “Actually, actually, no, you didn’t, so, you weren’t there when we all thought were were dying.”

“I was trying,” his voice breaks, so he pauses. “I was trying to prevent a biochemical weapon from getting unleashed in downtown Starling City.”

“You know, Ollie,” Thea says. Felicity doesn’t turn, doesn’t look back, but she can still hear Thea over the guy going nuts on a base drum in her head. “I think there may have been better ways to go about that?”

There’s a moment of silence, in which Felicity can only hear the clack of her own heels, carefully stepping over rubble, and a pregnant silence that fills what’s left of the Arrow Cave. 

“I’m out, too,” Laurel says, before she even makes it to the Foundry staircase. Felicity immediately freezes. 

“What?” Thea asks. Oliver echoes this question, softer. 

Felicity turns back in time to see Laurel pick up her heavy black duffle one-armed, and heaved it over her uninjured shoulder. 

“Laurel?” Felicity asks.

“I know I’m like, the newest person to Team Arrow, aside from Thea, sorry, Thea,” Laurel pauses. “I know that I’ve been here the shortest, but Ollie, what you did was really shitty. I don’t know what else you could have done but I’m damn sure that convincing us that we were about to get slaughtered in some League cell wasn’t one of them when you trusted Malcolm ‘Murdered Half the Glades’ Merlyn.”

Oliver says nothing. He’s withdrawn into himself, the way that he does. 

“Who, by the way, betrayed you even as your plan was working,” Laurel adds.

Felicity sees Al Sah-him standing in that grand hall telling them that he was engaged to Nyssa, which was just all sorts of wrong, and she almost has to grab for the wall. Equal parts horror on Nyssa’s behalf at the patriarchal bullshit of an ancient league of assassins, and nausea at the look that had been on Al Sah-him’s face. At the time she'd tried to look harder to see if it was Oliver in there, or still the stranger. And heartbreakingly, she could no longer tell which was which. 

“You said that, in order to defeat Ra’s, you had to give up everything you loved,” Laurel says. “Well, congrats, Ollie. Does it feel like you thought it would?”

“I did what I thought was the best, safest plan,” Oliver tells Laurel, behind Felicity. “I’ve seen what the Alpha-Omega did to Hong-Kong, I couldn’t let that happen to Starling City.”

“Your _plan_ ,” Laurel bites. “Was shit, Oliver. Goodbye, Thea.”

Felicity is glued to the floor like that one chick from Into the Woods, only her feet aren’t stuck in pitch, just her own dumbfounded shock.

“Besides,” Laurel says. “Felicity has a much better lair than this place,” she nudges a piece of rubble from the cop raids with the toe of her boot. “I think I’ll call it the Canary Cave.” 

Laurel squeezes Thea’s shoulder and then ushers Felicity further up the staircase. Felicity closes her eyes the last three steps and ignores the fact that she hears Oliver call out her name one last time.

The door shuts behind them with an awful finality that makes Felicity swallow nervously. It’s gone. It’s done. 

Laurel takes Felicity’s hand and leads them down the alley.

“Thea?” Laurel asks, looking back towards Verdant. 

“Nah, I don’t think,” Felicity pauses. “I think, I think she’ll stay.”

“Not like us.” 

“No,” Felicity says. “Not like us.”

“Well,” Diggle says, from thirty feet away. He leans against his SUV with his big arms crossed over his chest. “Three’s company, at least.”

“Digg!” Felicity calls. “I didn’t think you would wait up for us.”

“Was hopin’ I wouldn’t have to,” Digg says. He’s still wearing that grim anti-smile on his face, but it lessens, slightly, when Felicity and Laurel get closer to him. He opens the door to his SUV for Felicity while Laurel climbs in on the other side. “But I thought I would stick around, just in case.”

There’s silence as Digg turns the key and the engine turns over. Three pairs of eyes glance back at Verdant and the dark alleyway that they had all known well. 

Digg leans towards Felicity. “You okay?”

“No,” she answers, truthfully. “But,” she sighs. “I’m not dead in a League cell in Nanda Parbat, which is a significant improvement to twenty-four hours ago.”

“So, back to the Canary Cave?”

“We aren’t calling in the Canary Cave,” Felicity tells Laurel.

“Oh, come on,” Laurel complains. “What are we gonna call it, then?”

Felicity is already tapping away on her tablet. “The Oracle.”


End file.
